Ooo, that looks fun. Got it open in a tab on my phone. Looks like it’s free, so thats nice. I’ll give it a whirl tonight.
And here’s why I am wanting the DP/4 plugin - if it gets the tone coloring right anyway. neither it nor the MidiVerb were transparent at all ![]()
That’s just a Moog Model D running in to it - a very basic synth. All that atmosphere and funky evolving space sound is coming from the DP/4 and its amazing presets.
I’m still navigating my way around the DAW/plugin world, but I found the concept of NAMs to be interesting. Then I found Namrig last night which lets you download the NAMs from Tone3000 right in the plugin.
Nerding out a bit - I found a CDROM that I made in the early 90s with my custom Korg M1 programs/combinations along with a bunch of songs that I made with Cakewalk.
I managed to convert the bank dumps to SysEx and import them into the M1 plugin. Now I have to work on converting the songs to MIDI. I even found a sample of a silly little text file that I used to include when I’d upload stuff to BBS (Bulletin Board Systems - what we used before we were allowed on the Internet.)
I love it when the vintage synth emulation plugins are good enough to be able to load the old SYSEX. Both Arturia SQ-80V and Cherry ESQ-1 can and it rules, you can find all the original factory patches online.
Korg’s usually can too.
Looking at the Headrush Flex Prime - It supports NAM A2 captures and has Tone3000 built-in.
What I’m learning is that I can capture a tone setup (something I achieved with another plugin/fx chain) and then import it into the Headrush and make it portable. That seems too good to be true.
Nope, IR capture is the latest rage. Very common now; it’s the main basis for things like ToneX as well.
yep. the technology is really great. the impemlentation is another thing entirely. there is really no rules as to how all this stuff is organized, trying to find something you like can be a challenge. a lot of the time there’s no previews of it and then depending on what you’re trying to integrate it with you might not have what is needed to run it (like for instance in amplitude you can download a nam capture but then find out it requires a boutique amp that you would need to buy). there’s some really great captures but there’s a lot of junk too. and you also need to know that if you download a capture of a dumble amp with a rare klon pedal, that the capture is just that, a capture of one point in time - one amp setting, one klon setting. so tweaking to find a sound is minimal. i really think it just needs some polishing but the basic idea is cool.
I experimented a little with the new Smart:Chain plugin from Sonible, that you can get as a crossgrade for $59.
After some confusion and very bad results I found this video that makes things clearer:
What does it do? It prepares all tracks in a mix in a way that it sounds “best”, so you have a great starting point to do other stuff (like adding further effects and adjusting levels).
It’s obviously not a tool for experts like @howard or @StevFargan, but for noobs like me it’s really great!
It took me a day to understand how to use it (though I still don’t understand what “Gate” and “Input Rider” does), but the results are fantastic: the mix never sounded clearer, and it shows especially for vocals in relationship to other instruments.
In my latest song I could not understand some words in the vocal track with my manual approach, now everything is clearly understandable … and the vocals sounds very “intimate”.
The whole mix sound “professional” now - very cool!
It’s important to put this plugin on all (important) tracks of a song FIRST, as it provides a baseline for everything else you’re doing.
Very interesting: I noticed that the need for other plugins (especially EQ, limiter, compressor, de-esser and saturation) is much reduced and this is especially true for vocals, but also for (bass) guitar.
Highly recommended!
not necessarily. it’s both a handy beginners tool but also it can save experts a lot of time by quickly getting you on to the green in a number of mixing categories and then you tweak from there. i like it too (I’m fully in the novice camp obviously)
Yeah there’s nothing wrong with all-in-one stuff like that, though you do need to be more careful with overprocessing and phase. I’ve stopped using such plugins but plenty of others like them, nothing wrong with that.
I don’t agree with the overprocessing - it’s quite the opposite!
Not all modules are activated automatically and you can enable/disable whatever you like. Also, you’ll use it as a starting point and configure the modules manually, anyway you like.
I found that my mixes not only sound cleaner, they also look cleaner, in the sense that I don’t need any other plugins anymore for most tracks or at least not as many. I mostly add “special” plugins now, like amps, reverb, chorus or delay.
It’s not perfect though and it has some learning curve for noobs. Still don’t know what gating and input rider does, and I’m confused about the clipping/level module. Clipping seems to be a limiter, but it changes behaviour, depending on the auto-leveling mode it’s in.
Auto-leveling s#cks, by the way!
@howard: what do you mean by phase? This shouldn’t be an issue with MIDI tracks, right? It’s only when you mix it with vocal / bass recordings??!
I didn’t notice it yet, but if so: how to resolve?
Phase is a fundamental property of audio, along with frequency. Frequency specifies the pitch (how many Hz, etc) in terms of how many cycles of an audio waveform happen per second. Phase is the offset of the waveform from a zero time in the cycle.
Isolated phase is meaningless. Phase is extremely important in how audio combines back together. When things get out of phase the waveforms can subtract from each other and in extremis can cancel out entirely. For example, this is why bass guitars sound super shitty if the pickups are wired or wound incorrectly.
Nearly all audio effects shift phase by some amount, but especially EQ and filters. Stacking this can lead to very negative effects if you are, for example, double tracking. It’s one of the main things that can lead to audio sounding overprocessed.
On the other hand it is extremely useful when care is taken and do e deliberately. The easiest example is the Phaser effect, which is just what it sounds like.
Ha, yeah, I do understand phase - it’s the thing that drives me crazy when setting up my A/V surround equipment ![]()
If “nearly all audio effects shift phase”, how do you measure and resolve that?
And: wouldn’t it be logical, that an all-in-one solution takes into account phase shifting and corrects that, as they have complete control over the internal effects chain as well as all affected tracks?
Sonible is an engineer driven company and known for good software (which is why I am a little disappointed in the little quirks and instabilities in this release). They are like old fashioned Germans … though being Austrian.
the question is… does it? ![]()
I use my ears but an oscilloscope display plugin would work great
to correct it a phase shifter can help but it is best to avoid in the first place if possible
you should already have MOscilloscope
Ok …understood.
And how do you resolve it?
If you have several plugins per track (EQ, compression, reverb, amp, another EQ, another compressor, limiter) … and several tracks with some variety of those plugins, how do you hear which track is affected and which plugin causes the issue?
And how do you adjust phase within every plugin?
There must be some kind of offset value to be adjusted. I haven’t seen this up to now (but I didn’t look for it … yet).
Also, it should be quite hard to adjust phase, as the offset will be minimal.
Yesterday I tried to watch a movie, where A/V sync was not perfect. It was not easy to find the right offset, and this was only for a movie, not for phase…
Like I said - I generally try and avoid it and if I hear it I usually see what I can stop doing.
It only matters if you can hear it.


